In today's society, individuals and businesses conduct an ever-increasing amount of activities on and over computer systems. These computer systems, including proprietary and non-proprietary computer networks, are often storing, archiving, and transmitting all types of sensitive information. Thus, an ever-increasing need exists for ensuring data stored and transmitted over these systems cannot be read or otherwise compromised.
One common solution for securing computer systems is to provide login and password functionality. However, password management has proven to be quite costly with a large percentage of help desk calls relating to password issues. Moreover, passwords provide little security in that they are generally stored in a file susceptible to inappropriate access, through, for example, brute-force attacks.
Another solution for securing computer systems is to provide cryptographic infrastructures. Cryptography, in general, refers to protecting data by transforming, or encrypting, it into an unreadable format. Only those who possess the key(s) to the encryption can decrypt the data into a useable format. Cryptography is used to identify users, e.g., authentication, to allow access privileges, e.g., authorization, to create digital certificates and signatures, and the like. One popular cryptography system is a public key system that uses two keys, a public key known to everyone and a private key known only to the individual or business owner thereof. Generally, the data encrypted with one key is decrypted with the other and neither key is recreatable from the other.
Unfortunately, even the foregoing typical public-key cryptographic systems are still highly reliant on the user for security. For example, cryptographic systems issue the private key to the user, for example, through the user's browser. Unsophisticated users then generally store the private key on a hard drive accessible to others through an open computer system, such as, for example, the Internet. On the other hand, users may choose poor names for files containing their private key, such as, for example, “key.” The result of the foregoing and other acts is to allow the key or keys to be susceptible to compromise.
In addition to the foregoing compromises, a user may save his or her private key on a computer system configured with an archiving or backup system, potentially resulting in copies of the private key traveling through multiple computer storage devices or other systems. This security breach is often referred to as “key migration.” Similar to key migration, many applications provide access to a user's private key through, at most, simple login and password access. As mentioned in the foregoing, login and password access often does not provide adequate security.
One solution for increasing the security of the foregoing cryptographic systems is to include biometrics as part of the authentication or authorization. Biometrics generally include measurable physical characteristics, such as, for example, finger prints or speech that can be checked by an automated system, such as, for example, pattern matching or recognition of finger print patterns or speech patterns. In such systems, a user's biometric and/or keys may be stored on mobile computing devices, such as, for example, a smartcard, laptop, personal digital assistant, or mobile phone, thereby allowing the biometric or keys to be usable in a mobile environment.
The foregoing mobile biometric cryptographic system still suffers from a variety of drawbacks. For example, the mobile user may lose or break the smartcard or portable computing device, thereby having his or her access to potentially important data entirely cut-off. Alternatively, a malicious person may steal the mobile user's smartcard or portable computing device and use it to effectively steal the mobile user's digital credentials. On the other hand, the portable-computing device may be connected to an open system, such as the Internet, and, like passwords, the file where the biometric is stored may be susceptible to compromise through user inattentiveness to security or malicious intruders.
In addition, there are many ways to securely create, store, and manage individual cryptographic keys. For example, some applications may store a user's cryptographic keys in a key store or other data structure. The cryptographic keys in a user's key store may be accessed by a variety of applications. Some applications, however, may be incompatible with other applications or may compromise the security of a user's cryptographic keys by, for example, exposing one or more of the keys to corruption or unauthorized or unsecured access.